


Born of Fire

by isntitcrazy



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Angry Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arson, Comfort/Angst, Electricity, Elemental Magic, Evil, Evil Plans, Fantasy, Fire, Fire Magic, Fire Powers, Gen, Good and Evil, Hearing Voices, Hurt Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt/Comfort, Ice, Ice Magic, Ice Powers, Inner Dialogue, Internal Monologue, Kleptomaniac GeorgeNotFound, Lightning Powers, Lightning magic, Magic, Magic Powers, Magic-Users, No Romance, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Karl Jacobs, Pyromaniac Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Sapnap-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Snow and Ice, Tags Are Hard, Tags May Change, Thunder and Lightning, Time Travel, Time Travelling Karl Jacobs, dream team plus karl, many creative liberties, sapnap looks like his minecraft skin, they all look more like fanart and less like their actual selves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29443188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isntitcrazy/pseuds/isntitcrazy
Summary: When the raven awoke, there was nothing but flame.And after spending years all by himself in the heat, he finally stumbles upon people. Friends. A concept he had only heard of from the voice in his head, but had never thought he would find for himself.But there is evil brewing within all of them. Perhaps some a little more than others.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Karl Jacobs & Sapnap, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs & Sapnap
Comments: 7
Kudos: 65





	1. All the Ashes in My Wake

**Author's Note:**

> I'm v excited about this fic and idk why
> 
> No romance here, but my boy Sapnap deserves some love. And fire powers. Those too
> 
> Have fun and go read my other fic Parallel to You if you want dnf :]  
> haha self-promo

When the raven awoke, there was nothing but flame.

He recalls the heat so well. Nothing had come close to replicating that burn since then, even after all these years. All these years he’s spent alone, pent up in flame within himself. With skin burning hot and no other bodies to share the flame with.

There was a deep voice in his head, low and growly. It told him about something called  _ friends, _ and how pathetic it was to need them. Every night, when the raven laid down to go to sleep, that voice came back and reminded him exactly why the lonesome was so perfect.

_ He could do whatever he pleased. He didn’t have to speak unless he wanted to. There was never anyone waiting on him, or anyone to be waiting on. He was free.  _ **_Isn’t freedom sweet?_ **

The raven dared to be sick of it. Dared to grow tired of the quiet lonesome, dared to be exhausted by the orange of his flame. He wished to scorch himself with it, but an affinity for heat made him immune. All the dancing flame did as he dragged it up his arm was warm his skin, which were things he didn’t need to do outside of boredom.

But the voice was in his head, so the voice could hear his thoughts. Could attempt to quell them, to distract him with the promise of brighter flame, distract him with more musings of the grandeur that was complete and utter freedom.

Though the boy had grown tired of his own reflection in the water, the only form of human face he has ever seen. Closing in on six years of lonesome and the voice telling him he was nineteen, the raven longed for  _ company. _ Whatever company was, for how could he long for something he had never had, anyways?

That’s what the voice told him, anyways. He tried to brush it off.

There was only a void in his soul, one with claims to only be filled by another’s calming presence. Or perhaps an uncalming presence—but no matter what type of company it was, the boy wanted it. He craved it. He was ravenous, as desperate for another as he got for raging fire.

He had awoken to a world of flame. One orange and red and surrounding, hot on his bare skin. He had awoken not as a child, he had awoken dressed and ready, he had awoken already half-prepared for something he did not know. There was a sword buried deep in the fire, though the raven wasn’t sure what purpose it was meant to serve. When you were born with fire at your fingertips, what point did a blade have anyway? He took it with him despite himself, something in him screaming that it had been there for a reason.

And upon leaving the wrap of lava, he found the world to be just as unforgiving as it had seemed. Hot, black, and ashes. He swore the ground would melt the rubber soles on his shoes. He swore the ash would stain the white of his t-shirt. He swore a lot of things, but nothing ever came to fruition. Everything built of fire and flame belonged to him, so the ash would roll off his body untouched and the fire never burned him.

There were no memories prior to his wake. Nothing but darkness, anyways.

It was hot when he saw something ahead of him. Something distant in the black spires, something far, far away. The boy had rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and taken to an aura of flame, surrounding his tall build with glowing yellow-orange. Perhaps it made him look intimidating, though the only foes he had to intimidate were himself and the soulless creatures that scurried around him.

The raven saw a color he did not recognize. It stood out against all the black heat, cooler in it’s hues. And as he treaded closer to the form in the distance, he noticed how bright and unfamiliar they were. There was white ceramic on his face and a crude smile, skin paler than the raven’s but not white like his t-shirt, and that voice in his head screamed  _ green. _

The stranger turned to look at him. Let his pickaxe-wielding hand drop to his side, spoke from beneath his mask.

“Who are you?” 

The blond’s voice was deep and relaxing. It nearly scared the ears right off of the raven with its unexpectedness, and the way it sounded nothing like the only voices he knew: his own and the one. 

He stumbled for a moment. The stranger twirled the pickaxe between his fingers with ease. His obstructed face left much to the imagination, much more than the raven would’ve liked if he was in control.

**_You could be in control, if you were alone._ **

“I’m…” His voice was raspy with a lack of usage, difficult to hear. He cleared his throat. It didn’t do much. “Well, who are  _ you? _ ”

There was a chuckle from beneath the mask, half-stifled through the ceramic. 

“Dream.”

**_Dreams aren’t people, dreams are things. You have dreams in your head, you don’t need him._ **

Dream was taller than the raven. That was more intimidating than an aura of flame.

“Come on,” Dream prompted. “Don’t you have a name?”

No. “I never needed one.”

Dream scoffed, swung the pickaxe in a circle and slotted it in his belt. He crossed his arms slowly, leaned over the boy in a looming presence. The crude eyes on his mask narrowed, though the raven couldn’t tell if it was his imagination.

**_You do have a name._ **

He did?

**_There’s no use in you knowing it, is there? Not when you don’t need it. You even said so yourself._ **

“I…” the boy hesitated. “I guess I do have a name. I just don’t know it.”

“How can you not know your own name?”

Dream encroached on the boy’s space. Grew closer unwelcomely, their feet nearly touching. The flame around the raven extinguished rather quickly, afraid of something he didn’t yet know. 

“Just don’t.”

Tough acts were difficult to keep when crumbling was imminent. When there was intimidation in your foe, a thing never felt from this side before. All the raven had ever done was intimidate creatures in the dust, scare them into submission before burning them alive. But nothing was ever big enough to scare  _ him. _

Only Dream.

**_Sapnap. But you’d be stupid to tell him that, wouldn’t you?_ **

“Sapnap,” the boy said quickly. “That’s my name. It’s Sapnap.”

**_Are you throwing away your freedom?_ **

Perhaps he was.

“Sapnap?” Dream snarled. “That’s a ridiculous name. Did you make that up just now?”

“No.” Kind of. “Dream’s not a name, either, so you can shut your damn mouth.”

**_For someone who’s never spoken to another human before, you’re awful snappy._ **

“Whatever.” Dream leaned back, leaving Sapnap with a strange sense of pride. A feeling that he had won, or something. Though he wasn’t sure what his victory was over. “What are you even doing out here?”

Sapnap shrugged. “I live here. Always have.”

“You live in the Wastelands?”

Sapnap raised an eyebrow. “The Wastelands?”

Dream made a displeased noise from beneath the mask, head turning away for a moment. Sapnap only cocked his head to the side, feeling his chest heat up with something that wasn’t his flame.

“What, are you stupid?” 

Maybe. “No.”

“God, just come with me. You should meet my friends, anyways. Maybe we can knock some sense into that dumb fucking head of yours.”

_ Friends? _ “Yeah, whatever.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was more of a prologue than anything but yeah. George and Karl will show up in the next chapter and you will also discover what their powers are :] If you read the tags, then you probably already know lol
> 
> And perhaps one of you will feel the pain of writing a Sapnap-centric third person POV fic in Google Docs because his name constantly autocorrects to "Subpoena"


	2. Glowing Black Irises in the Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sapnap has never been faced with so much unfamiliarity. Turns out he knows a lot less about his world than he ever thought he did, despite the voice that's always told him he knows everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it is time for George and Karl! the gang is all here :]

Sapnap never asked for answers about the Wastelands.

The raven only followed Dream, walked two paces behind him through the ash, let hot fire dance above his palm in boredom. It warmed his hand in hot flame—but even with the proximity, it didn’t dare burn him. Not even when he dug the tips of his fingers into the heart of it, seeing if he could hold the fire in his grip.

He could not. That was obvious.

He even noticed the sparks at the blond’s fingertips, but he didn’t dare beg for answers. The voice in his head agreed with that decision, taunting him about the dangers in hot lightning.

Despite a glaring similarity of wielding something hot and dangerous, something about sparks hurt the raven in his core. He tried to calm the pain in his sternum by swallowing his own hand in orange flame, grabbing his chest with an iron grip and feeling the warmth through to his skin.

**_Sparks feel like danger, don’t they?_ **

Sapnap loathed to admit it, but the voice was right. He extinguished his flaming hand and dropped it heavily to his side, turning his attention to the back of the masked man in front of him.

He walked with purpose. With slouched shoulders and heavy hands. He walked in a way that felt  _ daunting.  _ It managed to scare the raven, despite it all truly equating to nothing.

The air around Dream was intimidating. Sapnap had already recognized that—it was a fact that had become glaringly obvious the moment he stepped into the stranger’s vicinity. But there was a sinister edge to it when he stood too close, something waving off the taller and swallowing the world around him.

A part of it reminded Sapnap of fire. All-consuming, dangerous, but infinitely entrancing. The nature of humans was to avoid flame, Sapnap knew that. But his affinity for the heat and the way he could control it drew him in, kept him close, sucked in by clean masks and an apocalyptic nature.

Though he still knew how different the sparks were. How sharp and stinging dared to laugh in the face of wrapped heat. He almost wanted to pin the lightning as a figment of his imagination.

Maybe those tanned hands had been empty all along. There was never a spark at the tip of his finger, Sapnap had only dared to make it up.

The delusions were futile.

**_He could hurt you._ **

He didn’t need a voice to tell him that. Dark-stone pickaxes and blood caught beneath blunt fingernails told him all he needed to know. And that threatening aura he had been so completely consumed by certainly didn’t help.

Dream was something dangerous, and every piece of him screamed that fact. If Sapnap had met someone else first—knew to fear someone masked and built on intimidation—then perhaps he would’ve run the other way. Listened to the warning voice that told him to stay by himself. Listened to the sharp deepness of the tone, one that warned of green and ceramic.

But Sapnap did not know, so all company felt welcome to his estranged body. No amount of  **_run away_ ** could get him to listen. He couldn’t silence his mind, either, but he could certainly choose to ignore it.

And ignore it he did.

When Sapnap noticed the air growing cooler, he was astounded by the fact that that could even happen at all. He had sworn to himself that he had seen every inch of this world, for it felt to him that every direction led to more heat. Every step was through ash, and there was never anything else hiding behind the horizon. 

It felt like circles. Every day, circles. Every road leads back to the center, to the lava, to the place he had woken up and felt the heat in his veins for the first time. He had never found anything past an endless loop.

So when the world started to lose flame, it was strange.

Maybe it all had something to do with Dream. 

**_It’s not too late to turn back._ **

He didn’t want to turn back. He had been correct in his suspicions, well-meant in his desires—having company was nice. It was a calming feeling, unfamiliar but absurdly welcome. And now that Sapnap had it in his hands, he didn’t think he’d ever want to let go of it. Not so long as he could help it, at least.

If Dream left him to the dust, then perhaps his mind would change. But deep within the taller’s danger-stoked aura, there was a sense of  _ trust. _ Like somehow, someway, Sapnap  _ knew _ the boy in front of him wouldn’t do that to him. That he would stay within the raven’s company, through everything this strange world threw at them.

The voice begged Sapnap to think otherwise. He decided not to listen.

Though he longed to ask Dream questions, to prod on the prospect of these  _ friends _ they were off to find, Sapnap kept his forked tongue behind his teeth. He drew his lips shut and made no moves to pull them open, swallowed every thought and question that rose up his throat like bile.

And he followed Dream. Watched the ash turn to sand, tawny and reflective of a sun he’d never seen before—one golden instead of red. It was all so bright to his dark-trained eyes, enough to make him squint and throw an arm in front of himself.

**_He’s trying to hurt you._ **

No, he just didn’t know. Though Sapnap had told him he lived in the ash, Dream couldn’t know that he had never left. Not unless he told him, but that clump of words felt unruly in his throat. Felt unruly in his mouth. So the raven settled for a single word, muttered out beneath his breath in sighed defeat.

“Bright.”

Dream chuckled, turning his chin over his shoulder. Sapnap couldn’t see the man’s face through his hasty cover, only the top of his chest and his arms. But he knew he was looking at him from behind that ceramic mask.

“What, have you never been out here?” the blond teased, head spinning back to look front.

“No,” Sapnap muttered. “I could never find it. Everything’s always looked the same.”

“We weren’t even that far,” Dream taunted. “I can’t believe you’re so clueless.”

Sapnap wasn’t clueless. Dream was just oblivious.

Eventually, the raven grew used to the sun. He became accustomed to the sharp gold, the reflection on the near-white sand, the way the wind blew it into his face in a way that made it stick annoyingly in his hair.

It felt strange to be coated in dust, tanned skin covered with a thick layer of grime. It was dirty and unwelcome, one of the first new feelings that Sapnap found himself disliking. Sand blew into his mouth, got caught between his teeth, stuck to his wet tongue and lips. 

It was so distracting. Sapnap’s mind caught on nothing but discomfort, in running warm fingers over his tongue to scrape the sand off, in tousling his hair, in rubbing at his cheeks with the sleeves of his shirt. But every time he got the sand off, more would come back to stick.

Sapnap hadn’t realized how little attention he was paying to their surroundings. Not until he was struck by the realization that he felt  _ lost. _ Of course, he still had Dream, but he was completely lacking in any idea on how to get back to where he’d come from. Back to the ash, to the lava, to the  _ Wastelands _ .

But none of that seemed to matter when they ran into others. Two boys, one shorter than Sapnap and one taller. They were both shorter than Dream, who still towered above them all in every sense of it. Perhaps that was where the caution was rooted—size.

Sapnap would’ve thought that true if the new strangers weren’t so intimidating. Their lack of height didn’t make either of them feel any less dangerous than Dream. It was almost  _ more  _ intimidating, the way they managed to tower beneath others.

One was small. Skinny, lanky, seemingly harmless at first glance. He wore goggles, white and black, tucked up in his brown hair, clearly scratched and dirtied with sand. He was clad in another color Sapnap couldn’t recognize, darker than Dream’s green and cooler in tone. It was all so striking against the bright sand, and the sun gleamed off the blade of a shining axe that he kept on his waist.

The other was only barely larger than Sapnap, but he had a look to him that made the raven want to run. All colors Sapnap could barely recognize, the only familiarity in his look being the yellow and red on his arm. He wore goggles on his head, too, but his were swirling and barely beaten, looking pristine and ever-powerful. He held a timepiece in his hand, golden and reflective of the sun.

Both strangers had raised eyebrows, gazes dancing between Sapnap and Dream in search of answers from either. The voice in the raven’s head screamed about color, yelled in lieu of pathetic coolness, and asserted how  **_only weaklings wear those shades._ ** Sapnap couldn’t bring himself to understand, so he chose to ignore it.

“These are my friends,” Dream spoke calmly, gloved hand gesturing to the unknowns. “Karl and George.”

Dream failed to specify who was who.

“Oh,” the raven said. “I’m Sapnap.”

The smaller one raised an eyebrow, scoffed and crossed his arms. He spoke with a voice unknown to the raven, one completely unlike the three he had dared to listen to before. He wasn’t sure if it was nice or terrifying, so he settled on both.

“Sapnap? Did you make that up?”

Sapnap rolled his eyes. “No.” Though he wasn’t quite sure if that answer was true or not.

The other stranger cleared his throat. “Well, Sap, where are you from?”

“Fire,” Sapnap said without thought. “Dream called it  _ the Wastelands,  _ but I’d never heard that before.”

“You’re from the Wastelands?” the smaller teased, voice lilted in the accent Sapnap didn’t know.

“Yes.”

The boy approached him, knocked against his shoulder with a closed fist. It sent Sapnap stumbling back, feet slipping against the sand with a lack of traction. He yelped out a “hey!” and grabbed his arm, scowling at the shorter—who managed to return the look.

“Dream, why’d you even bring this guy back?” the brunet scolded. “He’s obviously full of shit.”

**_Isn’t that pathetic? He thinks you’re lying._ **

“Are you accusing me of being a liar?”

“George,” the other stranger spoke calmly, softly, in a voice that felt akin to Dream’s. “Don’t be so quick. He’s not lying.”

The smaller—George—narrowed his eyes at Sapnap. He looked half-ready to hit him again, but he only scoffed and backed away. 

**_He knows his place._ **

“Jeez, for someone so tiny you hit pretty hard.” Sapnap rubbed at his shoulder harshly, disturbing the cloth covering it.

George barely looked offended. “What’s your deal, anyways?” he asked, voice no more familiar. “You some kind of fire mage?”

Sapnap thought for a second. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Well,” Dream interjected. “I’m glad to see that everyone’s getting along.”

It was sarcastic, blatantly, and George cast a displeased look in the direction of the blond. Dream only cocked his head to the side, all true expressions hidden beneath a crude smile, but Sapnap could sense something cocky and challenging in the way the man stood.

“I’m a time mage, if it’s worth anything to you.” 

Karl spoke with uncanny calmness, stark in comparison to the two he was with. His voice was kind, well-meaning, endearing in a way that enveloped Sapnap in welcome. He wanted more of it, more of Karl than he wanted of Dream and George. 

“And psychic. I can sense when you lie, so don’t try anything.”

Even his threats sounded sweet to Sapnap’s ears.

**_Don’t fall for it._ **

“What about them?” Sapnap gestured between the others. “What do they do?”

“Lightning,” Dream answered quickly, the golden sparks on his fingertips swelling in volume. “And I’m fast. And if I don’t want you to see me,” Dream disappeared in an instant, sending a jolt of shock up Sapnap’s spine, “then you can’t see me.”

**_How can you trust someone who never shows his face?_ **

Sapnap watched as the blond slowly returned to his vision, expanding out from his green-covered middle. The lightning still danced in his palm, threatening in presence. It felt like he might use it, but only if Sapnap dared to step out of line.

“What’s the mask for?” 

That might be out of line.

It got stares from all three of them, ones he could sense through everything on Dream’s face. The sparks grew wider, pulsed above his palm, fingers trembling where they lay.

The voice dared to repeat itself.

**_How can you trust someone who never shows his face?_ **

“Never mind,” Sapnap said quickly. “Forget I asked.”

The sparks disappeared, fading into the air as fast as they had arrived. And Dream dropped his hand to his side, all sense of glares fading from existence.

Sapnap waited for George to speak. Cast his gaze over to the brunet, thin arms crossed over his slim chest. His eyebrows were lowered and his lips were turned down, but all his scowling lacked hints of anger.

“I do everything,” he said slowly. “Even fire, if I wanted. It’d make you useless, but,” George rolled his eyes, “I could never be as good at it as you.”

“He swallows the magic off others,” Karl interjected. “The catch is that he’s always weaker.”

**_Thievery? You should just run now, before he robs you blind._ **

Sapnap felt secure in acknowledging that George had already taken. He could see it in the glints of orange in his dark brown eyes, cast between green and gold and purple and blue, the entire rainbow flaring beneath his umber.

“I wasn’t aware…” Sapnap paused, glancing between the three men before him, “that people could do that.”

“It’s uncommon,” Dream admitted. “Most of the time, you’ll have a thing. But for whatever reason, some don’t.”

**_Fire is your thing. Why have you dared to stray so far from it?_ **

“Hey, I have a thing!” George defended. “Stealing is my thing!”

“Yeah, yeah whatever,” Dream said with defeat. “You know what I meant, Georgie. No need to get so pissed.”

Maybe that’s why George’s voice was so strange. His strange heritage—as Sapnap presumed the magic all came from there—was the same thing that made his voice pitch all funny.

He was tempted to ask about it, but he feared another moment like when he brought up Dream’s mask. Perhaps, like the mask, it was all something they didn’t acknowledge. Feigned normalcy.

At some point, it would become normal to Sapnap, too.

“But none of this answers anything about  _ you,” _ Karl said. “You, Sap, have a lot to answer for.”

**_You have nothing to answer for, not to these degenerates._ **

“I do?”

The silence between them all felt like a  _ yes, _ though no one dared to say the word themselves. They only kept their gazes cast on Sapnap, as if waiting for him to answer a question they hadn’t asked yet.

So Sapnap waited, too—for a question to answer. The voice in his head begged him to lie, but the flame licking up his chest cried for the truth. The comfortable aura emitted by the three of them—Karl in particular—cried for the truth.

The air cried for the truth. The cooling air, the color-changing sky, the setting sun. Everything cried for the truth, and it made the voice odd and left out.

“For starters,” Dream interrupted Sapnap’s inner monologue, his voice sharp and no longer feeling as muffled. 

When Sapnap looked at him, he noticed the mask pulled up to his nose, exposing pink lips cut by scars. They framed the skin of his face with the same intimidation that his presence held, and every darkened line seemed to glow and spark.

His entire being was lightning. Sapnap wondered if Dream felt electric in his chest the same way he was consumed by flame, or if he only looked the part.

**_Danger._ **

It felt like an alarm in his head. The raven tried to turn it off, seeking to blink his eyes slowly as his mind was filled with the word. He stared at Dream expectantly, awaiting words he did not yet know.

The blond cocked his head to the side. “Where are you  _ really _ from?”

Sapnap swallowed thickly. It felt like a trick question. “The Wastelands, or whatever. I told you that.”

“You can’t be from the Wastelands.” George shook his head. “No one’s from the Wastelands.”

**_They’re already lying to you. Running away is the only option._ **

Sapnap ignored the sound. But that didn’t stop him from stumbling over his next words, sputtering pathetically where he stood. Every dart he threw missed the mark, every word he found fell away from him before he could say it. 

“Wha—”

But when words finally found him, Karl was quicker with his tongue.

“What do you think makes them  _ Wastelands, _ Sap?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> docs finally stopped with the dump "Subpoena" autocorrect and I am grateful


	3. I Still Worship the Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, the voice is louder than Sapnap wants it to be. But it's never been a matter of want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just wanted to say thank you for reading <3 I will give all of you a kiss mwah

“What do you think makes them  _ Wastelands, _ Sap?”

All the words he once grasped fell away immediately, leaving Sapnap the same sputtering mess he was before. Nothing but dropped words and hopeless grabbing, looking for something in the air he knew he’d never quite see. His vision was empty, dead empty, and his voice was unbelievably silent.

Karl crossed his arms and gave the raven an incredulous look, a look that dared to seek answers. Sapnap was unable to offer what he was looking for, voice coming up with nothing but strangled syllables. Every reach he made toward words came up empty, and his eyes caught nothing but expectant glances from three near-strangers.

**_They think they know everything._ **

Perhaps they did. It certainly seemed that way, with how they all dared to stare at him.

Dream’s ceramic mask became more intimidating when Sapnap could infer the expression behind it. Could assume the waiting glance, could pretend he knew the man’s face well enough to see something dangerous. It felt like the end of all things.

And George and Karl both waited with narrowed eyes. Lowered eyebrows and slant, the whites of their scleras completely lost to thinned eyelids. Surely they knew what their looks did to him. The fear they instilled in his gut, left brewing as if he were going to vomit.

**_You know everything. More than them. More than they’ll ever know._ **

It had never been so hard to breathe, not even when every inhale filled his lungs with ash. He felt stifled, as if someone held weights to his chest and screamed of broken bones.

He almost wished his ribs would snap, before they started to drown in thick vermillion.

“Nobody’s from the Wastelands,” George repeated.

But Sapnap was from the Wastelands. He was a living, breathing example of the very thing the brunet argued against, something that stood to disprove the exact words he’d just said. He was  _ here, _ and George was acting as if he couldn’t see him at all.

But he could see him. He could hear him, even. It made every bit of ignorance utterly selected. Completely intentional, chosen to exist. And the idea of bewilderment that was not feigned made the raven’s chest swell red.

Sapnap was from the Wastelands, and George spit lies.

**_How can he be so stupid?_ **

“Well.” Sapnap swallowed, but the red still crawled up. “Did you ever consider the fact that maybe you  _ don’t  _ know everything?”

George laughed lowly. “We’ve been here for thousands of years, Sap. If anyone knows everything, it’s us.”

_ Thousands _ of years? 

**_They think they’re better than you._ **

Sapnap swallowed his distaste, feeling it run hot down the back of his throat. He tried to stifle the claims that they saw themselves as gods, the claims that they  **_believe themselves to be above you._ ** He hated the way the voice tried to paint them poorly, the way it kept swearing up and down that these people should be avoided.

He hated even more that he wanted to believe it. Hated the hot, vermillion tendrils he could feel swirling inside him, the red coils that attempted to convince him.

Sapnap  _ liked  _ the three of them. He liked to be around them, wanted to be with them, enjoyed their presence. They were  _ people, _ people like Sapnap was, mages with powers he had never even heard of. And dipping his toes into a world unknown only made him desperate to drown himself in it, and they were the only ones who could answer all his burning questions. Red or not, he needed their words.

So he asked one—a question—something wrapped in curiosity and unanswer. It was difficult to keep the scarlet out of it, to swallow it all past his mouth before he opened. He only managed just barely, and he could hear the tinge of heat behind his voice—but only because he had been looking for it.

“What, you immortal or something?”

Karl cocked his head to the side. “Aren’t you?”

**_You are._ **

“I mean, I guess so. Yeah, I am.”

Karl looked at him strangely. “You’re so weird.”

**_He thinks you’re lesser than him._ **

It was all getting harder to stifle. “Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know yet,” Karl admitted. “But you’re not lying. You haven’t lied since I met you, even if it feels like you should.”

**_If they don’t trust you, you shouldn’t trust them either._ **

But he  _ wanted  _ to trust them. Even through the thick red, their presence demanded him to, all warm and honest. Being next to the three of them made Sapnap  _ want _ to put his faith in their existence, because it felt like he should. It felt so incredibly right, like nothing he had ever felt before. 

And it wasn’t warm like the fire in his veins, wasn’t warm like the flames he could light at his fingertips, wasn’t warm like the red still glowing at his sternum. It was pleasant,  _ summery, _ somehow familiar despite being completely new. The raven craved more of their honest warmth, so he let himself sink deeper into the heart of it all.

He even dared to believe that they were more trustworthy than the voice in his head.

The voice wasn’t very happy with that thought. The red wasn’t, either.

**_You’ve barely just met them, and I’ve told you everything you know._ **

“What would I gain from lying to you?” Sapnap proposed. “You already told me you’d know. I wouldn’t lie, it’s pointless.”

“But you  _ can’t _ be from the Wastelands,” Karl insisted. “It’s the whole point. No one’s from there.”

**_They don’t believe you. How could you trust someone who won’t listen?_ **

Why  _ wouldn’t _ they listen? Karl can sense non-truth, why couldn’t he see that he wasn’t being honest himself? 

Did ignorance blind his magic, provide shaders to the lies he spit past his own lips? Was he just immune to his own words?

A hundred thousand questions. Zero answers. The only thing Sapnap found when he looked was  _ red. _

“Can’t you sense your own lies?” Sapnap prodded. “Or George’s, or something. You all keep claiming that I can’t be from the Wastelands, but I am. So you’re lying. You’re  **_all lying_ ** .”

Anger was hot, and Sapnap hadn’t felt it in awhile. But he could tell that the red flame in his core was familiar, something akin to the blazing fury he’d felt few times before.

**_You could destroy them in a fit, couldn’t you?_ **

He knew that was true. But it’s not what he wanted.

“We’re not lying, Sap,” Karl said firmly. “No one’s lying. It just doesn’t make sense is all.”

Sapnap searched for the right words in a red sea of nothing, looked carelessly for anything that could provide even a speck of clarity in this mess. He dug hands through hot fire, felt it searing against his skin—but his hands still came out unscathed. 

Crimson grew exponentially, it always had.

“Why can’t I be from the Wastelands?”

The raven’s voice was low and scratched, rumbling out from his chest and the back of his throat with a new semblance of danger. It was spit out on false pretenses, following what felt like too many attempts at disbelief, what felt like an eternity of not being heard.

Sapnap knew it had barely been a few minutes, but there was something blinding about shades of carmine.

**_You could destroy them in a fit._ **

“You just can’t,” Dream chuckled. “That’s just how it works.”

It was all becoming intentional, sickly intentional. It had to be. It had to be purposeful avoidance, plugging your ears with cotton and  _ choosing _ not to listen. It was no longer being startled, it was no longer things  _ not ma _ **_king_ ** _ sense _ **_._ ** It was on purpose, it was knowing, it was decidedly being deaf.

God, how stupid could someone be? 

Unless it was just the scarlet talking.  **_Why would it be?_ **

“But _why?_ ” Sapnap pleaded. “Anything. Give me _one_ **_goddamn reason why_**.”

Dream shrugged. “They’re barren and on fire.”

He was so lax. Decidedly, intentionally lax.

**_You could destroy them._ **

_ He didn’t want that. _

Dream was so careless in his word choice, as if he couldn’t see anything glowing in the eyes of the raven. Maybe the mask was blinding, too. Or maybe he was just  **_selective_ ** .

The latter felt truer. The latter felt like the answer. The latter was right. Dream was only selective, and his mask was growing infuriating.

_ They had been so furious by his prodding before,  _ **_what did they have to hide from him?_ **

This wasn’t the matter at hand, but Sapnap would be  **_lying_ ** if he said it didn’t fuel the burning red.

“I’m a fire mage.”

“Fire mages come from the South, not the Wastelands.”

Karl’s voice felt patronizing.

**_They think they’re better than you._ **

Sapnap didn’t want to ask. He didn’t want to question. He wanted to  _ know, _ but he didn’t want them to be the ones who taught him.

Their auras were still so comforting. The raven still trusted them, he felt it in his stomach. The way he wanted to be honest, an itching feeling that wanted him to ask for the answers he didn’t know. It sought to overpower the hot crimson in his chest, to stifle the red and pull words past his lips.

“What’s…” Sapnap paused. “What’s the  _ South?” _

Their looks became just as patronizing as Karl had been, and it all turned hot and carmine again.

Dream chuckled. “You really don’t know anything, do you?”

**_You know everything. More than they know._ **

They were being ignorant, they were choosing naivety.

The crude smile on the ceramic felt like a punch in the face, and George’s silence screamed louder than the other two could ever dream of out loud. It was deafening.

And Karl was supposed to sense lies. Dream was  _ lying. _ Sapnap knew more than  **_they ever could. He was smarter than all three of them combined._ **

“I’m  _ not  _ stupid.”

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Karl practically interrupted him. “How could you not know?” 

Sapnap felt his hands flare up. “I  _ do  _ know.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t lie.”

Why had he even tried? Why did he ever think he could push past the strength of something magic, spit past it all and speak without truth?

Everyone else  **_had done it_ ** , why couldn’t he?

“How come you only ever talk about  _ my _ lies?” Sapnap practically spit the words out, his palms growing warmer. “Aren’t they lying? Can’t you tell when Dream  **_doesn’t say something honest?_ ** ”

“Yeah, but they’re not lying right now.”

“But I  _ do _ know!”

“Sapnap, calm down.” George was pleading, but his half-smile said otherwise.

**_You could destroy them._ **

He tried to extinguish the heat in palms, tried to stifle the red in his sternum. It seemed to work, if only slightly, and the raven could manage to block out the screams of the voice rattling in his skull.

“Fine,” Sapnap huffed. “Let’s just change the topic.”

Dream was quick to mention the fact that it was going to be dark soon. That the monsters would start to emerge from the sand, and they’d all be dead by morning if they didn’t get back to shelter. He insisted that they move, but nobody budged just yet.

It gave the raven a moment to drain out the last threads of crimson within him, watch them spin out of himself in cries of vermillion. It gave him enough calm to press about the monsters he spoke of, all words devoid of any fire. They came out calm and normal, just as he wanted them to.

Upon hearing his questions, Dream and George looked to Karl. The time mage only shook his head, silent in his affirmation of the truth.

**_They always think you’re lying._ **

He was a stranger, of course they expected the worst from him. And apparently all his words felt like lies to their well-trained ears, so much so that it all came as shock after shock.

They only thought he was lying because they  _ tho _ **_ught he was stupid._ **

Something red threatened to return. Sapnap threatened to kill it.

**_Would it hurt them to put a little more faith in you? After all the faith you’ve put in them?_ **

The raven didn’t want to debate a matter of fairness, no matter how much the voice tried to sway him. Perhaps he didn’t radiate the same trustworthy energy they did, or perhaps he was reading everything wrong.

He felt something scarlet bubbling in his chest again. It took every ounce of his willpower to crush it.

When they  _ did _ finally start moving, it was all slow footsteps and drawled conversation. Dream was abhorrent toward their lenient steps, citing not only the monsters in the sand but his desperate need to move quickly.

“I’m fast,” he insisted. “It’s part of my  _ thing. _ This is painful, you’re only doing it to mess with me.”

“We’re not doing it to mess with you.” George rolled his eyes, and the blond awaited word from Karl.

He got nothing.

Sapnap tried to ask questions again. He danced around the idea of monsters, begging for something truthful about the South—allegedly, where he  _ should _ be from. It was strange to have three people assert an allegiance to a place he’d never heard of, and he even said as such.

“I’ve never even heard of it, and apparently I should be  _ from _ there?” The raven scoffed. “C’mon. You practically  _ owe  _ me answers here.”

“This is the South,” Karl said finally. “It’s hot, and fire mages come from the desert. We only came all this way because George needed someone to steal from.”

“Did you find someone?” Sapnap asked.

“Yeah,” George said. “You.”

George produced a flame in his palm. It was glowing and orange, but not as fierce as the one Sapnap made in turn. George only rolled his eyes and extinguished his, watching intently as Sapnap did the same.

Then they both returned their gazes forward, carrying on in dead silence.

**_He thinks he’s stronger than you._ **

He doesn’t. He admitted as such himself, said he could  _ never _ be as powerful as Sapnap. It’s written in the law of things—he only gets to steal so long as he stays weaker.

He said so himself. And no matter how red Sapnap’s insides got to be, he’d still believe George. He didn’t think anything—couldn’t think anything—because he  _ knew _ that the raven would always be stronger. It was not a question of opinion.

George knew.

**_He could’ve been lying._ **

Karl would know if that was a lie.

**_You’re the stranger here. They have history._ **

Sapnap knew that, of course he did. The three of them all knew each other, and he was… he was here. Something new, or different, or something. 

**_They don’t want you here._ **

Dream wouldn’t have introduced him to his friends if he didn’t think they’d get along—if he thought he’d be unwanted. He could’ve shoved him off, or killed him on the spot. Left him dead in the ash, bleeding out onto the dark stone.

But he didn’t. That had to count for something, right?

The voice told him that it didn’t count for anything. Sapnap ignored it, focusing his gaze on the setting sun. 

A sinking golden sun set the sky ablaze. The sun Sapnap knew never did that. The carmine only disappeared, swallowed behind a greyed-out sky and left nothing but black in return. But in the desert, in the  _ South, _ the sky turned orange and blue and  _ pink. _

Sapnap lit another flame in his hand. He watched it dance above his palm, his red, racing mind thankful for something familiar.

**Author's Note:**

> This was more of a prologue than anything but yeah. George and Karl will show up in the next chapter and you will also discover what their powers are :] If you read the tags, then you probably already know lol
> 
> And perhaps one of you will feel the pain of writing a Sapnap-centric third person POV fic in Google Docs because his name constantly autocorrects to "Subpoena"


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